John the Posthumous (4 page)

TEN

T
he hunt
commences in a hollow or copse. A parlor, a
yard, a lawn—these are for other occasions.
Grave
, given the hidden children, seems the most common variation.
It requires five bones, paint or lye, and a figure in the distance. It is akin to
church windows
, despite the gate, and to
wolf
, despite the bats. In the former, the killer blinds at a barn wall. In the latter, a barn burns down.

Now there is ample view of the animals.

Branks
, in which the partners quarrel—this is for the parlor. Hatpins—especially those foreign in design—have something of a ceremonial function here. This is less true of ruined broomsticks. The draw spoils, at length. The windows lose the blue roofs in the afternoon.

Poor Eleanor
falls from favor by the end of the century. A later variation requires a hedgerow—and poison for the vermin. The forms, from above, may suggest graves, though daughters will also do. Orphans on the lawn—not to mention pitchforks—invite greater complications, especially at night.

Other animals die behind a schoolhouse.

The hunt
commences in a hollow or copse. Cuts are drawn from wooden boxes—red or brown, as per local practice. The shapes in the dirt may suggest a different game, with rocks in place of the faces.
Grave
seems better suited to a hayfield. It is akin to
church windows
,
despite the carriage tracks, and to
wolf
, despite the rows
of claws on the wall. In the former, the girl waits at a door. In the latter, she closes her eyes and dies.

HOUSEPOST, MALE FIGURE

I
.

T
he Tudor has a hidden room, or two hidden rooms, or three, through a crawlspace or a trapdoor, or behind the pantry wall—where the youngest son was found eight days later. The Georgian is a girls’ school, with rifles on the lawn, or an orphanage, its upper stories destroyed during the war, the flesh of the attendant evident on the walk. The Cape is painted gray, and is famous for ladies in distress, carrying themselves down the stairs, and
from window to window, facing Bird Road or Lion Drive
or Red Lane, or facing the Cape next door, painted gray.

In Daniel and Susanna, the house is said to resemble a person—though you may find such comparisons embarrassing. And the city is a town, in fact. Shall we recall that the strangers—beyond the garden, at the wall—are enamored of the woman? That they wait—that is to say—for the man’s wife?

The Victorian hides a bent hat and fourteen knives—come watch Mother cutting—and is set afire by Father, whom you can see between the trees. The Greek Revival appears in a county almanac, absent the holiday objects, and the gentleman’s name, and the suitcase in the nursery. The Colonial has a room for mutes, off the entrance hall and through the study, or through the sitting room and down one hallway and then another, the latter terribly black, with a window giving onto a courtyard—where the thief, having fallen from the roof, dies during the night.

I
n our house: there are ten windows on the ground floor.

I would prefer to exclude the two in the front room, however, as they are pine-framed, unlike the others, with drapery in an unpleasant shade of blue. I would prefer to exclude, as well, the foyer window, from which I once saw my wife embrace a rival of mine. And I would prefer to exclude the powder room altogether—simply as a demonstration of decorum.

The storm windows and the screens: these are rather in disrepair.

The lake window, as we would refer to it—though the house, of course, faces neither a lake nor a pond, nor even a creek, a fork, a stream—had been governed, for a time, by a curious assemblage of hinges, several of which suggested claws.

The objects on the windowsill: I suppose they were carried off—once and for all—by the wind.

It is more satisfactory in this corner of the house, at the bow window—especially in the morning, in spring, notwithstanding those occasions when the light makes grave shapes on the tabletop.

The panes in the middle row, left and center: they cracked last January and shattered in March.

The low windows along the dining room wall,
three of them, each roughly one foot square, resemble
leper windows, or so I used to think, having seen
renderings of these in this book or that—likely something of my father’s.

Transom windows and fanlights: these you will see in other houses.

The pantry window—dark glass, after the fashion of so-called blood windows, the field red and the details green, animals and houses, or houses and animals—was eventually painted shut.

T
he judas, I should probably add, was strangely
placed—off-center, in any case, and a bit too high. It had been hidden, in the beginning, behind a grim little
contraption, rather box-like in design, with six ordinary
rivets, perhaps seven, perhaps eight, some smaller than others—a hook and a wire at the top, and a broken lever at the bottom.

T
he deadbolt was poor. It failed, shall we say, one February afternoon. The door was removed the following summer, incidentally—beetles of some species having taken to the frame.

A typical Colonial door has six panels, four rails, and two stiles.

Exterior: the letterbox, vertical or horizontal. The former appears in the hanging, or hinge, stile. The latter appears in the cross rail. Interior: the muntin, center and upper. This is for a name, in some houses. One abandons a nail there—or perhaps one’s daughter does.

The rattling of a door, at this hour, may recall a certain boyhood story.

The floor plan of the Jackson house, on New Street,
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania—built 1838; restored
1914; destroyed, by fire, 1979—indicates, among other things, a narrow staircase, a narrow hallway, and four bedrooms, one drawn without windows or a door.

Some Colonial doors have four panels, three rails, and a long gash in the shutting stile.

Interior: the doorknob, enamel or wood. The former is usually white. The latter is blue, as per custom, on the occasion of a great disgrace. Exterior: thumb latch, pull, and plate. One expects cast-iron or brass. Rust, in this instance, finds its way to the numbers, top rail.

The dowels will warp by next fall.

The door was painted red one year, to match the back door, and brown another—some months after a storm. The hinges were nickel-plated. The copper doorstop was more unfortunate, I thought, than the little silver hook.

A
nd I suppose that, after all,
spyhole
might have
sufficed. It measured less than a quarter-inch across—
more a puncture, as it were, than a proper hole. Or, at this distance, a simple yellow spot, on account of the porch light. And then a simple black spot, when the porch light went out.

I
n the foyer: a walnut floor. The cracks near the door create a triangular pattern. There are water scars at the foot of the stairs.

I scrape cobwebs from the baseboards with a dull knife.

Church oak, in folklore, bleeds every evening. And red oak, I notice, creaks quite modestly—at least in the rear hallway, early in the afternoon.

The object discovered beneath the floorboards, often something of the mother’s, is a separate affair, a ghastlier matter for later on.

I prefer steel wool and turpentine for certain stains.

On the stairs: Axminster, six years old.

I stand on the landing—in an attitude of embarrassment—and then retreat to our room.

On the floor of the bedchamber or the corridor or the inner parlor—in Thornton, during the war—the father dressed the daughters for their coffins.

Church oak, burning, recalls the sound of a stricken man. Or, by other accounts, the sound of a burning animal or a coffin bell.

I clean the ceilings with rags—remnants of bedsheets, for the most part, and sleeves torn from white shirts—or with a wire brush.

In the guest room: Wilton broadloom, cut pile. A wooden pistol—in the form of a horse—sits in the far corner. Perhaps these are carpet beetles vanishing beneath the cabinet.

I count footsteps in the hallway.

In the country house—outside Lawton or Marion—they measured the dimensions of a body in repose, a body in distress, a body in agony, and marked the floor accordingly.

Some Colonial floor plans trace the progress of the body—or, put a different way, the path of the wife from room to room to room, and then down the stairs, and from the stairs to the door.

S
ounds in the house: foyer and front hallway. I list them from left to right. I open and close all the drawers. The rain, the sound of the rain—this makes me afraid. The lock, I like to think—and now the teeth of the key; the latch—is rather less sad than the man standing on the porch, his umbrella a bit too red. But we prefer the wind, in any case, early in the morning—do we not? And the commotion in the trees, the curtains in May and June.

Were she to return: I imagine the sound as a
narrow column, as a metal box, as a border of cloth.

Sounds in the house: front room and side hallway.
Were you to adopt a posture of repose, supine on the brown chaise, say, at five o’clock in the afternoon, the door—across from the brickwork and the vitrine—might offer of itself one small corner and three curious
noises. Or the contours of some other report—a hammer
in an attic, and now an animal in a yard—were you to find yourself just west of the end table and just east of the fire screen, at eight o’clock in the evening, having fallen to your knees.

I
n our room: the curtains displayed faint stripes, a
herringbone pattern, and a formation of birds—
doomed, by the look of them.

The stain at the hem was an unseemly green.

Is it true that the Rowan bride—in a stone house, one hundred years ago—named her rooms for former suitors?

The deacons—in Eaton and Marion, but sometimes in Harrow as well—would arrange the shades in various ways, indicating contagion, danger, alarm, and so on. Whereas the strangler would hide behind the curtains, or within them, before crossing to the bedroom door.

In the hallway: the blinds made frightening sounds at night. They were wooden—maple, I expect, or elm. But dark brown is all I can recall.

The cord wound around a brass cleat.

The curtain and rod, the shade and ring—perhaps such figures are taken, in one tradition or another, as emblems of betrayal.

The wives—in Putnam and Whitebriar, and in Newbury and Bratton and Pike Fork—would open the drapes just so, and for only a moment, or two, or for an hour in the afternoon, and then close them, indicating a day of the week, a time of day, a location.

In the child’s room: one curtain split lengthwise, along a pleat or a crease. The other, I gather, caught in the window and tore.

They were replaced with shutters, painted white.

Iron screens, detailed with human forms, their faces turned away—these were placed in the window frames of convent sickrooms and hospital morgues.

The daughters—in Thornton, during the war—would tie the curtains back, disclosing a skull on the windowsill. The maids took the curtains down in due course, carried them to the bed, addressed them with shears and a brush, and then set them atop the daughters’ coffins.

S
hadows in the house: bedrooms, master and guest. The first, on a curtain, a white curtain, suggests a ripsaw. Or, more sensibly, a crooked hand. The pine tree is the culprit, I take it, in conjunction with the wind. Or some aspect of the ladder—which will fall, in any case, before long. The second, on a bed, slants rather handsomely—until the door closes.

My form on the wall: it now assumes a more
gruesome shape.

Shadows in the house: child’s room. Were you to cross from the door at eight o’clock in the morning, in fall, the dormer window, to your left, might appear entirely black, at least for a moment. Were you to cross
from the door at noon, however, and pause at the
wardrobe, the shadows might contrive to remove from
view one column, several trees—oak trees, I believe—and the name of the road.

T
he wagon at the hanging: this is no longer on the wall. And now we have the rats and the ants and the way the door sticks, even in winter. That makes up a day. But what about those nights when the shade is made to produce a sound like this one? All those lovely worries in the hallway, and the wire on the platter. As the hour passes. Or wears on, to be precise, until the lights go out.

The colors may recall the walls of your childhood room.

Wall hornets, in cathedrals, would conceal murals and the like—and were, on occasion, mistaken for inscriptions. But elsewhere, in a brown house, years later, there were only rows of coats in an entrance hall.

I touch it five times, the line on the wall—just west of the sconce and just east of the door. On the other side of which, yes, one’s wife stands in her nighttime attire.

In the photographs from that year: you can see the son at the window, but never the daughter.

I count again the number of nails, up and down.
The banister flatters the paneling, as the molding flatters the frame. The wallpaper has a dark border,
the vines disguising the animals.

In castles, perhaps, bones were stacked to build
walls—atop which you might see crosses, painted black
to resemble those figurines once stationed at table in place of departed fathers.

A sledgehammer and a crowbar will do quite nicely in removing a bedroom wall.

The clock atop the lowboy: this has a skeleton dial. The mirror cuts the door in two. Do you imagine someone in the house? And now one anchor follows another, a little drawing on a shelf. Or a knife and a knife, and then a ruined hat. But this is foolish of me. I know that—I do. Take away the shade, after all, and we have nine panes, the socket, the channel, and the stop.

I
I.

A
s a child, as a boy: I was distracted, shall we say, by several forms on a wall. There were squares, a series of them, in four colors, maybe five. I imagined these to be houses, naturally, or rooms, a plain arrangement of rooms, the doors just out of view.

O
r, on occasion, pillars in a row. Or a pillar, a long
hallway, a staircase. The last, I grant you, may require some elaboration. I was small and still. It was winter. One line was brown, very brown. After an hour, or two, at six o’clock, or seven, my father would carry me out.

T
he sound was terribly bright, I thought. Though I
suppose I was alone with this notion. He made shapes in
the air with his hand—spot under spot. The next room
was blue. My nightshirt was white—the color, perhaps,
of your own childhood attire.

O
r black, rather, and at nine o’clock. I was frightened, as you will gather from the timbre of my voice. I would find her crying—at the back door, and at the staircase. Touch your finger to the hem of your trousers or skirt—that is another sound altogether, is it not?

T
he finial was dull, or chipped, or missing—I can no longer recall. And the banister, the style of it—this is of little consequence now. I should note, instead, my height at age eight. And that the objects sat on the landing at a bit of a slant, and then fell down.

I
II.

T
he first story begins with the woman, or with the two of them, the man and the woman, in a town, a house afire at the end of a road. Or with a family in another town, far from this one. The widow is sometimes called a relict. The blind son is Edward or William or John. The father is always the father. There he is, crossing the lawn. How I wish we could save him before morning. The second story begins in the maid’s chambers, but concludes in the sitting room. A child—the son—is decapitated by a portrait. His mother’s, in one version—a fairy tale. A soldier’s, in another—a romance.